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Friday, 19 June 2015

Nigeria and USA game recorded as third most-watched women’s football match ever

The
game between Nigeria and USA at the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup in
Canada has been recorded as the third most-watched women’s football
match ever.

Despite registering just a lone goal, the match
has surpassed other highly-rated games from past tournaments in terms of
viewership.

The game ended 1-0 in favour of
the Americans, marking the end to the Super Falcons’ campaign at the
tournament. The African champions had drawn 3-3 with Sweden before
losing 2-0 to Australia in their second game.

FOX Sports said the match broke multiple records in viewership on it network.

“The
US Women’s National Team beat Nigeria 1-0 in the teams’ third and final
FIFA Women’s World Cup 2015 group stage match in Vancouver to advance
to the round of 16. And, like the team’s first two tournament matches,
the FOX broadcast broke multiple audience records,” it said in its
report. “The
match attracted 5 million viewers on FOX, making it the most-watched
FIFA Women’s World Cup group stage match ever and the most-watched
soccer match ever on the network, breaking the marks set Friday for
USA-Sweden (4.5 million) by 11%. “USA-Nigeria
is the third most-watched women’s soccer match of all time, trailing
only the USA-China 1999 Women’s World Cup Final (17,975,000) and the
Japan-USA 2011 Women’s World Cup Final (13,458,000). The Brazil-USA 1999
Women’s World Cup semi-final drops to fourth (4.9 million), followed by
USA-Sweden 2015 Women’s World Cup group stage (4.5 million).”

Audiences
for each US group stage match this tournament grew, beginning with 3.3
million for USA-Australia, which was televised on FOX Sports 1, to 4.5
million for USA-Sweden and 5 million for USA-Nigeria. The growth from
Match 1 to Match 3 is 52 per cent.

The audience for USA-Nigeria
(5 million) is +285 per cent better than the audience for the third USA
Women’s World Cup group stage match on ESPN in 2011 (1.3 million).